The pātaka stood crooked on the cliffside, its
carved tiki faces cracked by salt and neglect.
Rangi Tāwhai came back in ’83, boots caked with
West Coast mud, her rifle slung like a sin.
She’d been banished ten years prior — not for
violence, but for speaking too loud when the
council voted to sell the sacred tōtara carvings
to a Christchurch dealer. Tall poppy syndrome,
they called it. A woman who dared name the theft.
The law wasn’t written. It was breathed. Since
’78, anyone who spoke of the carvings’ absence —
even in a prayer — woke mute. By ’81, three
elders had starved, unable to swallow. The town
called it the TongueSickness. No one admitted
the carvings were taken. No one said the hunter
who stole them was the mayor’s son.
Rangi didn’t speak. She walked the bushline at
dawn, tracking the scent of kauri resin and
diesel — the same trail that led to the
abandoned dairy shed where the carvings were
hidden. She found them under rotting hay, their
eyes gouged out, replaced with glass marbles.
The mayor’s son had sold them to fund his rugby
tour. But the land remembered. The tōtara didn’t
just hold ancestors — they held the weight of
silence.
On the night of Matariki, she lit the shed on
fire. Not to destroy. To return. The flames
licked the carvings, blackening their faces, but
the wood didn’t burn. It hissed. A sound like a
thousand held breaths. When the fire died, the
carvings stood whole again, wet with dew, facing
the sea.
Next morning, the mayor stood on the wharf,
mouth working. Nothing came out. His tongue was
gone. Not cut. Unmade. Like it had never been.
The townsfolk didn’t cheer. They didn’t cry.
They brought kūmara and kōura to Rangi’s door.
Left them in silence. One old kuia placed a
single pounamu stone in her palm — not a gift. A
reckoning.
The law still held. But now, it bent.
Rangi kept the rifle. She didn’t hunt deer
anymore.
She hunted lies.
